Exemplary embodiments relate generally to cache storage systems, and more particularly to on demand allocation of reserved cache buffer slots.
Due to continuous reductions of available on-chip area and wiring tracks, some cache designs have begun utilizing specific portions of the cache memory device as data buffer slots. While providing specific or dedicated portions of the cache memory as buffer slots offers some benefits, one drawback of this technique is that these reserved buffer slots consume space in the cache even if they have not yet been used by the operation for which they have been reserved. Consequently, the cache has fewer slots to store regular data since these reserved buffer slots are allocated without requests from the operations that need the reserved slots. These reserved buffer slots also require software to initialize the specific cache positions and mark them as reserved buffers in the directories during the initial system power on sequence.